Guitar Town

Monday and back to the office with me this morning. Huzzah? I have an Admin Day and my supervisor is out of the office until tomorrow. It’s also 32 degrees (!!!) this morning. My desk feels cold, and there’s definitely a chill here surrounded by windows. The apartment feels nice and toasty; we turned the heat on last evening as the temperature dropped. It kind of feels like Christmas now, you know? Warm weather at this time of year always seems wrong in some way. I did very little yesterday, and won’t apologize for simply falling into a spiral of not feeling like getting anything done for most of the day. I wasn’t tired; I just was kind of in a low-energy recharge state for most of the day. I did write some notes for the book, and started getting to the place where I feel like I finally have the narrator’s voice, and that was what was holding me back from getting started. I am hoping today to get some good background work done on it after work tonight, depending on how cold it’s going to feel on the way home and once I get here. I do have some chores to do tonight, too–which I should have done yesterday but alas, did not. No guilt, though, which is kind of a lovely feeling, and undoubtedly a result of the anxiety medication.

I do find myself thinking sometimes so this is what it feels like to be normal before realizing and remembering that there really isn’t a normal; everyone thinks they are normal because we only truly know our own experience, and our minds instinctively think that everyone is the same as us. I knew I wasn’t like everyone else very young, which was very unpleasant, and was absolutely terrified people would figure out I was different and it took years for me to reach a point where I didn’t much care about being different anymore and actually embraced it. I am also very literal and completely oblivious sometimes, which really bothers me…but being oblivious, I am not really aware of just how oblivious I am. I am oblivious about being oblivious, which is kind of weird.

But I did watch a lot of documentaries yesterday on Youtube; Paul’s not been feeling terribly well so he spent most of the weekend sleeping and resting, so I was pretty much on my own yesterday during the day. I watched one on the Hapsburgs (always fascinating to me), one on the Romanovs, and several other historical ones–a lot of legends and lore of the South and the Appalachians; and other tales of hauntings and murders. I was, of course, horrified about the latest round of mass shootings, and more than a little surprised that one wasn’t actually in the US but rather in Australia. Since the targets at Bondi Beach were Jewish-Australians celebrating Hanukkah, I can’t help but feel that anti-Semitism was at the root of this horror. All mass shootings are horrors, but these ones driven by bigotry and prejudice really bother me. There’s no justification for killing other than self-defense, and even then I am not certain how one lives with that sort of thing. The end result of bigotry and prejudice is inevitably violence; which is why hatred and hate speech is such an abomination.

Targeting people celebrating a religious holiday is especially egregious and evil, no matter what my views on religion are.

Sigh. But it’s Monday, and a new week and it’s back to the office with me in a bit. Christmas is next week, and once again, I failed to do Christmas cards and probably am just going to give up on that for the year. I do need to wrap a couple of presents, and I need to ship one to Dad, but does it really matter if it gets there before Christmas? Probably not.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Monday, Constant Reader, and I’ll be back in the morning tomorrow.

All I can think is that he’s getting cold standing by the window in his underwear like this...although it could be a prompt for a Christmas crime story.

Animal

Monday and back to the office with me. I didn’t want to get out of bed this morning–quelle surprise–but I feel pretty good and rested this morning. Today is an Admin Day, so I will get bleary-eyed at some point going over paperwork or doing data entry; and mental fatigue usually comes along with that. The apartment also looks better this morning than it has in a while when I get up; still needs some work, alas, but that’s how it goes sometimes.

We had a nice anniversary yesterday, finally going to see a matinee of Superman at the Prytania Theater. I always forget what a fun little cinema the Prytania is, and that they play classic movies for the first show on weekends. As for Superman, as a lifelong Superman fan…well, I loved it, and so did Paul. Perfectly cast, beautifully shot…this is the first movie since the first two Christopher Reeve films that really gets Superman right, but I think this adaptation might be my favorite (the only reason it’s not definitively my favorite is because I just saw it and am still in the afterglow of the enjoyment, which might tilt the scales in its favor…but I do want to see it again, which is a first for any adaptation). Nicholas Hoult was superb as Lex Luthor…there wasn’t any casting that seemed off or wrong.

I won’t say more because I am going to write about it for my newsletter.

We got home and I watched this week’s episode of Foundation and then watched Nicholas Hoult (he’s been a favorite of mine since Warm Bodies) in Juror #2, which, outside of the massive contrivance necessary for the story, was pretty good if a bit flawed. It was intended to be an interesting look into morality–definitely situational morality–and one of those “what would you do premises. There was another deep flaw in the story, too–but it would entail a spoiler, but this flaw was again necessary for the plot, so that’s another contrivance. But it has a terrific cast, was directed by Clint Eastwood, the performances were quite excellent, and it held my attention.

I have to run errands on the way home, and perhaps have some groceries delivered as well this evening. We need to find a new show to watch, too–having now finished America’s Sweethearts–so I’ll have to be looking around on the streaming apps tonight once I get home, too. Maybe, just maybe, I’ll even find some time to both read and write. #madness

And on that note, I need to get ready for work. Have a lovely Monday, Constant Reader, and I will be back tomorrow!